Public Funding for British Gas Trading Limited

The Movers and Shapers project investigates the feasibility of an innovative business model where an eco-car club provides environmentally-friendly mobility ('Movers') while also helping electricity networks to operate more efficiently by demand shaping ('Shapers'). It achieves this by scheduling the recharging of its Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) to respond to variations in electricity tariff, which encourage power demand at times of high renewable energy yield or low power demand (e.g. at night). The same price incentives would also prompt the car club to produce hydrogen fuel by electrolysis for a potential fleet of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs), which have longer range than BEVs. For each journey, car club members can hire whichever of these vehicle types is the most suitable. This tariff arrangement enables cost savings for the car club, while helping electricity networks to accommodate more low-carbon generators, like wind and solar power. Thus, a symbiotic relationship links power and transport sectors to improve efficiency, cost, quality of service and access to mobility, while reducing noise and pollution.

Energy theft is a major problem and contributes an unwelcome addition to everyone’s energy bill. Using consumption data alongside logging information on meter behaviour from smart meters in near real-time analysis will enable us to identify possible cases of theft more accurately. It may also identify conditions for meter failure previously not considered. Project DIET, led by British Gas, and supported by University of Oxford, G4S and EDMI, will investigate the topic based on a large portfolio of smart meters data. The project intends to develop new methods to derive useful insights by combining techniques from the Cyber Security Research Centre at University of Oxford and in-field know-how from British Gas with view to gaining intelligence from the meters alone without any customer details for reasons of privacy. The project will run between 1st December 2015 and 31st December 2017.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

Awaiting Public Summary